The Galileo Commission

The Galileo Commission is something that was set up by the Scientific and Medical Network. Its remit is "to open public discourse and to find ways to expand science, so that it is no longer limited by an outmoded view of matter and physical reality, and so that it can accommodate and explore important human experiences and questions that science, in its present form, is unable to accommodate", including telepathy, precognition and near-death experiences, altered states of consciousness and "the possibility of inherent purpose in the universe".
https://www.galileocommission.org/

It has now produced a report, which was officially launched in London yesterday. Out of curiosity, I went along to the launch. If I understand correctly, the report was written by Harald Walach, with the assistance of two other cooordinators, David Lorimer and Richard Irwin, and about 80 other advisers.

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The report is due to be published later this month, and there is also a booklet containing a summary of it. I gather that both of these will be available online, though I'm not sure whether they'll be free. I thought people might be interested to see the two-page synopsis from the booklet. I also gather there may be changes before the official publication.

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The report is due to be published later this month, and there is also a booklet containing a summary of it. I gather that both of these will be available online, though I'm not sure whether they'll be free. I thought people might be interested to see the two-page synopsis from the booklet. I also gather there may be changes before the official publication.

I'd be interested to see an expanded discussion of Point 8 in the above summary of the report. Unless I'm missing the point, it seems to be suggesting adopting a dualist ontology.

I'm sceptical of this commission. It looks interesting, but one of the advisers is Larry Dossey, who promotes oneness philosophy.

Point 12 is  also suspicious. Are they going to promote some kind of Advaita Vedanta philosophy?

I'd be interested to see an expanded discussion of Point 8 in the above summary of the report. Unless I'm missing the point, it seems to be suggesting adopting a dualist ontology.

Yes. Judging from the question and answer session, it sounds as though some of the advisory panel aren't particularly comfortable with this, as they are idealists.

Below are the relevant pages from the "Executive Summary", though I'm not sure whether it makes things much clearer. In part it suggests that it would be fine if science came to materialistic conclusions rather than making materialistic assumptions. But I don't see how that fits in with the dualist-sounding approach as a "minimum-consensus".

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(NB I am assuming there won't be any copyright objections to a few pages of the summary report being posted here. The audience was urged to share it with their colleagues, and it sounded as though the text was going to be made available online when some revisions had been made to it.)

I'm sceptical of this commission. It looks interesting, but one of the advisers is Larry Dossey, who promotes oneness philosophy.

Point 12 is  also suspicious. Are they going to promote some kind of Advaita Vedanta philosophy?

I would doubt that each of the many people listed there agrees on every point, as Chris attested to in saying that some of the people there who subscribe to idealism weren't particularly comfortable with the position set out in Point 8. It's possible that they set aside some of their differences in the interest of just moving science forward in one way or another, regardless of some of the more specific things they might agree or disagree on. It seems that at its root the Commission is simply focused on the notion that the current scientific model is outdated or cannot accomodate many of our observations, and thus that the model needs to change. So I wouldn't discount it just because of Dossey or because of one of the summaries of one Point.

Yes. Judging from the question and answer session, it sounds as though some of the advisory panel aren't particularly comfortable with this, as they are idealists.

Below are the relevant pages from the "Executive Summary", though I'm not sure whether it makes things much clearer. In part it suggests that it would be fine if science came to materialistic conclusions rather than making materialistic assumptions. But I don't see how that fits in with the dualist-sounding approach as a "minimum-consensus".

This might be a "solution-by-committee" problem. Trying to force a consensus by concession or, in other words, a compromise that satisfies nobody. 

Science 3 would intuitively exclude monist models that are reductive, such as the materialist one, but also an idealist monist model.

Well, ok, but why exclude any model if you are being truly open? Also, I'm not sure that idealism is a reductive model as I think about it. I think about mind as the fundamental ground of all being within which everything we know is manifested. This might be analogous to spacetime in the materialist worldview but there is a difference and a problem for materialists if we follow that analogy. Firstly, mind is also the source of creativity so "things" are manifested without the introduction of some other "material": the "material" is still essentially mind. There is nothing similar for spacetime unless one speculates about quantum field theory as does Krauss in his "Universe from Nothing" conjecture. So, what I'm trying to say is that mind does not reduce and nothing reduces to mind; mind just is and everything is mind. Isn't that what monist idealism means? Forgive my ignorance, I'm neither a philosopher nor a scientist and my ideas are probably half-baked and amateurish but that's how I see the opposing ontologies.

This might be a "solution-by-committee" problem. Trying to force a consensus by concession or, in other words, a compromise that satisfies nobody.

When Walach was asked about this. he said he viewed the idea as a "bridge". I took that to mean that if people could first be persuaded to accept it as a working hypothesis, they might later be willing to accept something even further away from materialism.

Personally, I doubt whether this report will make many converts in the scientific community.

I sort of see it like a "club" with a "petition", kind of like...to who it may concern, we the undersigned hereby request that science as a whole accepts that consciousness is not produced by the brain. Even if I had the credentials, I'm not sure I'd want to be on such a list, although I have the upmost admiration for a great many of the names there and I do wish them well.

I tend to think that the majority of scientists (materialists of course) would probably just say get on with it then, what's stopping you...why do you need us to believe that consciousness is non local ?  I can't personally see a certain point coming when materialists will put their hands up necessarily, even if Parnia for instance, comes up with something spectacular (I didn't notice his name on the list?) Then again, maybe it isn't meant to be a "petition", maybe I'm getting it all wrong.

Edit: Thinking about it, I guess they could be petitioning for funding which they are generally starved of.

Thanks for posting this Chris. I think I saw an earlier draft of that fourteen-point list. Glad to see that preserved the duality part. The devil is in the details, though. I personally know some of the advisors and am aware of the work of a few others. For instance, I have complained about the work of a few of them: Failure to Replicate ITC and Debunking Survival Under Cover of False Academic Authority.

However, these good intentions tend to be corrupted by the momentum of old ideas. My wife, Lisa included an item about the Immortality Project in a 2012 column she writes: 

UC Riverside gets $5 million to study immortality: The John Templeton Foundation has awarded the University of California at Riverside $5 million to study age-old questions surrounding immortality and life-after-death. They’re calling it the “Immortality Project,” and its goal is to apply rigorous scientific research to questions surrounding immortality and the afterlife. (There was more, but this is the main idea.) From: UC Riverside gets $5 million to study immortality 

The money went to mainstream scientists and much of it ended up going to the study of why freshwater hydra live so long. From: Science Research Grants Related to Immortality Announced. We who are interested in the Survival Hypothesis saw nothing to further our understanding.

Items 8-12 could describe the model I think of as the Implicit Cosmology. The other items go toward my argument that, as it stands today, science is more the art of debunking than an earnest effort to understand our nature.

I think we do need to see scientists use a different model for what is considered "good science" but my sense is that any new model that comes from this effort will be based on the assumption that mind is a product of brain rather than something that might have preceded brain and may continue after brain is dust. That would not be the paradigm change the authors seem to envision.

Thanks for posting this Chris. I think I saw an earlier draft of that fourteen-point list. Glad to see that preserved the duality part. The devil is in the details, though. I personally know some of the advisors and am aware of the work of a few others. For instance, I have complained about the work of a few of them: Failure to Replicate ITC and Debunking Survival Under Cover of False Academic Authority.

However, these good intentions tend to be corrupted by the momentum of old ideas. My wife, Lisa included an item about the Immortality Project in a 2012 column she writes: 

UC Riverside gets $5 million to study immortality: The John Templeton Foundation has awarded the University of California at Riverside $5 million to study age-old questions surrounding immortality and life-after-death. They’re calling it the “Immortality Project,” and its goal is to apply rigorous scientific research to questions surrounding immortality and the afterlife. (There was more, but this is the main idea.) From: UC Riverside gets $5 million to study immortality 

The money went to mainstream scientists and much of it ended up going to the study of why freshwater hydra live so long. From: Science Research Grants Related to Immortality Announced. We who are interested in the Survival Hypothesis saw nothing to further our understanding.

Items 8-12 could describe the model I think of as the Implicit Cosmology. The other items go toward my argument that, as it stands today, science is more the art of debunking than an earnest effort to understand our nature.

I think we do need to see scientists use a different model for what is considered "good science" but my sense is that any new model that comes from this effort will be based on the assumption that mind is a product of brain rather than something that might have preceded brain and may continue after brain is dust. That would not be the paradigm change the authors seem to envision.

Just to point out, Dr Sam Parnia received a generous grant from them for his Aware project (the best part of two million I believe)